Katsushika Hokusai
Hokusai Katsushika (, 1760 - 1849), known more simply under the name of Hokusai (北斎), is a painter, draftsman specialist in the Ukiyo-e , engraver and author of popular writings Japan board. Its work influenced many European artists , in particular Gauguin, Van Gogh and Claude Monet, to see the artistic movement called Japonisme. It signed sometimes its work, starting from 1800, by the formula Gakyōjin , “the Insane one of drawing”.
Biography
Hokusai is born in the district from Warigesui, district of Honjō (still known rural area under the name of Katsushika) to Edo, the 9th month of the 10th year of the period Horeki (October-November, 1760) unknown parents. It is adopted towards the age of three or four years by a family of craftsmen. His/her adoptive father, Nakajima Ise, are a manufacturer of mirrors for the court of the Shogun. Hokusai, then called Tokitanō, consequently expresses aptitudes for the Dessin and of curiosity for the Peinture.
In 1773 - 1774, it is in training in a workshop of Xylographie and in 1775 it engraves itself the six last sheets of a humorous novel of Sanchō. In 1778, it integrates the workshop of the Master Katsukawa Shunsho (1726 - 1792), a painter of Estampe S Ukiyo-e , specialist in the portraits of actors. It is in this workshop which begins its work of craftsman of the Dessin and of the Estampe to the modest incomes. The following year, it produces under the name of Katsukawa Shunrō a series of these very successful portraits. It however leaves the workshop with dead of the Master because of dissension with his Shunko successor.
Hokusai then knows a period of great poverty during which he studies the techniques of the schools of Kano Yusen, Tsutsumi Torin and Sumiyoshi Naiki. It is subject to also the influence of the Western Art and discovers the perspective thanks to a Japanese artist, Shiba Kokan, which attends the Dutch, only authorized to moor with Nagasaki.
Towards 1794, it reinstates a traditional school: the Tawaraya clan of the Rimpa tradition. In 1795, it illustrates under the name of Sōri the poetic collection Kyōka Edo No Murasaki which is worth its first success to him. Of 1796 with 1799 it produces a great number of albums and Estampe S in separate sheets called Surimono . It is at the same time that it adopts for the first time the name of Hokusai and gives itself in 1800 the nickname of Gakyōjin Hokusai, “the Insane one of drawing”. In 1804, it paints, in the court of the temple of Edo, by means of a brush and of a bucket of Indian ink, a giant Daruma of more than 240 m ² which one must hoist to the roofs to allow the assistance to admire it. He reiterates this exploit in 1817 with Nagoya.
In 1812, Hokusai starts to traverse the country, of the old capital Kyōto at the new city of Edo. It stops in Nagoya, where it meets Bokusen, another artist. According to the councils of this last, it publishes later two years its Manga : collections of its innumerable notebooks of sketch, original and marginal studies. The publication of this series of picture books extends until in 1834 and includes/understands twelve volumes.
Sixty years old, Hokusai takes the name of Iitsu to mean its passage in new age and is devoted to this period with the illustration of books.
1831 sees the publication of one of its major works, the series of prints Fugaku Sanjūrokkei or Trentesix Sights of the mount Fuji , which is worth a world recognition to him. It makes use then of the Prussian blue , which had been introduced with the Japan in 1829 and from which Kesai Eisen had already benefitted. It produces during the same time several series of prints which break all with the tradition of the ukiyo-e . It is thus with the beginning of the year 1830 that are born the series of the Cascades , of the Ponts , the Oiseaux and the Fantômes (the latter stopped at the end of the fifth board).
It leaves fine Edo 1834 to spend one year to Suruga in the peninsula of Miura to the south of Edo and publishes the following year its series Fugaku Hyakkei or the Hundred Sights of the Mount Fuji , which resumes with the feature all its work on the landscape.
About the middle of 1836, it turns over to Edo whereas the capital knows the year of the Great Famine. He survives thanks to the sale of his works against a little food and stops his series of Hundred Poets and Poems , started with the beginning of the year, with the twenty-seventh board.
In 1839, a fire comes to devastate its workshop, carrying with him accumulated work of the last years. The ten years which follow were peaceful as regards production. It is told that, each morning, he endeavoured to produce at least a drawing, ritual to which he devoted himself until his death.
It is in 1845 that it makes its last voyage to the meeting of a friend of the province of Shinano. It carries out during this visit some paintings in a temple.
He dies the May 10th 1849 and its ashes are buried with the Keikiōji temple, in the popular quarters of Asakusa, in Edo, where he had passed the major part of his life. It leaves behind him a work which includes/understands 30 000 drawings.
Its last words are: “Still five years and I would have become a large artist. ”
Gallery
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